Monday, July 18, 2011

Settling in...

This week has been focused on international students, which I still have a hard time calling myself. The first time I went down to the city (Melbourne) was a free day and so Rachel, Valerie, Canada (Chris), Zack, and I went down for the entire day to explore. The city is HUGE and beautiful. It is a great mixture between historic and modern. All of the streets are lined with restaurants and shops. The tram/ bus system here is so interesting and well integrated into everything. The trams go up and down every street and stop at lights just like cars. So, after taking the tram to the main part of the city and going to the museum, we took another tram down to St. Kilda, which is a beach front and yacht club. The ocean everywhere is clear and beautiful!

We then ate lunch at this amazing Italian restaurant and 4 out of 5 of us got the chicken parmy which was amazing! We then went back to the sports and aquatic center and just walked around. Finally we when to a chocolate bar and split a chocolate pizza, which was the perfect end to a long day! Yesterday we went back down to the city with the big group of international students, so not only were we a diverse group the LaTrobe students who took us kept calling out "INTERNATIONALS!!" when we needed to gather which was embarrassing. lol We got to go to the market which is every Sunday all across the town which I am excited to go to and then we got to go the the Eureka Tower. This is the tallest building in Melbourne and it's actually a residential building! From the 88th floor we could see the entire city, which made me realize just how big the city really was. It was definitely more spread out and seemed bigger than St. Louis, but the entire country of Australia has just 22 million people so it's definitely not as populated.

The city is gorgeous and I can not wait to explore more...because it will honestly take me the entire semester to even see most of the city. Well I sign up officially for class tomorrow so that should be exciting...not! Talk to you super soon! :) Love and miss you all...try to stay cool in the crazy hot weather! (I'm wearing a coat and pants everyday....)